Gold, Fire, Ice
by greenovalfruit
Summary: Blood Ties/The X-Files x-over. Vicki's tracking a demon and gains a couple of mysterious American allies. When has a little mystery ever put Vicki Nelson off? Post-Wrapped in BT, around S3 in XF :: slight timeline AU :: femslash :: V/S :: Review please!
1. Night Walker

"Goddamn devil spawn! Why do you always have wings?"

Victoria Nelson's feet pounded the pavement as she tried to keep the creature ahead of her in sight. With 20 feet on her forward and 10 feet above ground, Vicki was having trouble catching up to the infernal beast, as well as discerning it amongst the smokey shadows of Toronto's side streets. Wrenching another breath through her lungs, she skidded around a corner. She was now following the demon only by its hideous shrieks. She vaulted over an empty packing crate, stumbling as she hit the ground but just managing to stay upright. Thank heaven for small mercies, her mother's voice slipped through her mind as she built up speed again, searching through patches of darkness for her quarry.

Vicki moved steadily forward, weaving around trash cans and the usual junk left in back alleys, bumping into most things but managing to avoid taking a serious spill. Gradually, the inhuman screeches died down to the occasional echoing growl ahead of her and eventually, there was only silence. Vicki slowed, treading carefully as she scanned the darkness that was all but impenetrable to her. Even in the light, skittering black clouds pulsed at the edge of her sight. Her night blindness was worse than it had ever been but here she was, creeping through back alleys, following another supernatural freak into God knows what sort of dangerous situation.

"Here, demon... Where the hell have you gone? Wait - don't answer that."

Vicki moved forward, squinting at every shadow and running a thumb under the strap of the salt gun slung over her shoulder. She edged into the light of an intersecting side street, the streetlamps bathing her in a faint orange glow. She stayed still, watching the shadows. The creature she was trying to track only went silent when it was stalking its prey. She'd been too far behind for it to be interested in her so it must have found something else worth terrorising. She was just considering moving along down the alley back into darkness when she heard a shout from the main road followed by several gunshots and a screech.

Vicki sprinted towards the lights of the road, unshouldering her gun as she ran. She stopped suddenly at the mouth of the side street, looking for the source of the noise. Just off to her left, she spotted two people in heavy trench coats, both with handguns drawn, ducking as the demon swooped down over their car. The smaller of the pair, a woman whose hair shone like fire under the streetlamp, raised her weapon and fired at the creature again. It took little notice as the bullets sunk deep into its translucent skin, hovering above them for a moment before dive-bombing the couple again. Vicki knew from experience that it made only a few passes before attacking its prey in earnest.

She lifted the rifle to her shoulder and focused on the beast as it reached the zenith of its second dive. Just as it readied itself for a final drop, she squeezed off a couple of rounds into its midsection and right wing. It screamed in anger, writhing in mid air and dropping a few feet as it did so. Vicki lowered her weapon a few inches, gauging the effectiveness of her shots. The beast howled in defeat, flying up above the rooftops, and headed north-east, back to its current lair. Vicki smiled grimly and glanced at the pair with their guns still drawn, looking at her in shock. She didn't need any extra trouble tonight, her job was done. She turned and melted into the darkness, moving swiftly into the alley she came from, back to her apartment. She ignored the male voice shouting for her to wait and picked up her pace.

She could do with some sleep.


	2. Battle Plans

Midmorning light flooded her office and Vicki rubbed her eyes for the hundredth time. Hunting demons and keeping regular hours were pretty much mutually exclusive and yet here she was, sitting at her desk, trying to focus on the phone records of a very normal, very adulterous husband she'd been hired to expose. _Can't all be 2 am chases and improvised weaponry_, she thought, as she shuffled the pages again and squinted at them through her glasses.

Reading the same line ten times over and not registering any of the information, Vicki decided it was time for more coffee. She picked up her empty mug and rounded the table, heading into Coreen's area of the office. She'd given her assistant a couple of days off after she fell asleep at her desk while researching the batlike creature Vicki had spent most of the night tracking. Even though she was meant to be resting, Coreen had already emailed and faxed her twenty new pages on potential weapons, spells and traps to use on their latest monster. Vicki sighed as she pulled another couple of sheets from the fax machine, scanning them tiredly while she poured coffee from the pot into her TPS mug.

She dropped the pages on Coreen's desk, planning on reading them when she was more alert. Vicki trailed into her office and sat heavily in her chair, placing her coffee cup carefully to the side of the desk and dropping her head into her hands. Bed, sleep, sheets, soft, warm... a tumble of words and images circled around her head and she growled into her hands. Focus - cheating husbands aren't as interesting as murderous fiends (or soft beds) but they pay the bills. Just as she readied herself to take another stab at the phone records, she heard a soft rap at her door. She looked up from her desk to see two familiar figures standing in the doorway, watching her. The couple from last night.

"Victoria Nelson?" The man stepped forward first, his long coat whispering against his dark suit. The woman was close behind him, watching Vicki carefully with bright blue eyes. The PI regarded them both with caution. Trenchcoats, suits, neutral colours... government agency, for sure.

"That's me." She watched as they pulled identification out of their pockets in almost mirror image.

"I'm Agent Mulder, this is Agent Scully. We're with the Federal Bureau of Investigation and we'd like to talk to you about last night." Vicki cringed inwardly. Of all the people for the demon she was following to choose for a snack, it had to be a couple of feds away from home. She indicated the seats opposite her desk and watched them sit down, focusing their attention on her.

"How did you find me?"

Vicki picked up her coffee and took a sip, taking in the agents across from her. The man was obviously tall, even seated, and his suit hung from his shoulders in a reasonably attractive way, if not quite in the manner that Mike's fit across his muscled chest. His eyes had an insistent probing quality but, although she was getting a pretty pissed off vibe from him, she didn't sense the usual macho bullshit presented by out of town cops. His partner tilted her head slightly. Those blue eyes were a little unsettling. Between the two of them, Vicki felt a little like something being observed in a test tube.

"We asked one of the TPS detectives on duty this morning about a woman in glasses roaming the streets in the middle of the night, involved in paranormal activity. Your name came up rather quickly."

The female agent had a ghost of a smile on her lips as she spoke. Vicki raised an eyebrow and let her gaze wander. She was easily recognisable as the woman firing her 9mm at the supernatural predator the previous night. Her hair was a golden red in the sunlight that filtered through the office windows. She was tiny compared to her partner but the brightness of her burning-ember hair, her blue eyes and her pale skin gave her a certain presence. Vicki had the feeling her quick appraisal hadn't been missed by the female agent but she feigned nonchalance, leaning back in her chair and cradling her mug in both hands.

"So, what would you like to know?" A faint look of disbelief appeared on Mulder's face. Vicki couldn't blame him.

"Well, let's start with what the hell was that thing?" Vicki shrugged and sipped her coffee. She was way too tired to go through the whole This'll-sound-a-little-weird-but... routine and being direct sometimes got rid of people with questions. Play the crazy card and Uno! Only one person left in the room.

"Ice demon." There was a pause, during which Vicki calmly returned the twin blank stares she was receiving. Scully recovered first, leaning forward slightly and making very direct eye contact, speaking slowly as if Vicki was a child with an overactive imagination.

"An ice demon?" Vicki nodded. Scully shot a look at Mulder before returning her attention to Vicki. "Isn't that a contradiction in terms?" Vicki smirked into her cup.

"That's what you're getting from this? Infernal popsicles don't make sense?" She watched them both, waiting for them to thank her for her help and leave, shaking their heads. When neither moved an inch, she sighed, placing her mug to the left of her phone records and pushing a folder full of papers across the desk. "As far as I can tell, it's from Scandanavian mythology. A sorceror wants to take control of his little section of Nordic countryside, so he creates a kind of crystal ball with eternally swirling ice and snow inside. Says a couple of spells, rubs the ball and hey presto, instant ice demon." She paused as they flipped through the research she'd gathered, with much help from Coreen.

"It seems that this crystal ball is more fact than fiction and someone who knows what it is has managed to create their very own pet ice demon. I can't find anything on how to kill them so the next best thing I've got is finding Mr Magic. Problem is I've hit a complete dead end in tracking this guy down. I've talked to every historian, every antiquities dealer and run fifty something names through every database there is and nothing." She took a deep breath, rubbing the bridge of her nose trying to stave off a headache.  
"So I've been following this thing round for the past week trying to make sure it doesn't eat anyone I know." Mulder looked at her with intense curiosity, as if deciding whether she was insane or just a little cracked. His question surprised her.

"You shot that thing last night and it cut and run. My partner emptied a full clip into it and it didn't even flinch. What did you do?" Vicki smiled at him and hooked a boot under the strap of the rifle she'd left leaning against a filing cabinet. She swung the firearm into one hand and placed it on the desk.

"Salt cartridges. A little body modification, the right coating on the inside of the barrel and knowing something about home made ammunition goes a long way to deterring a demon." Mulder picked up the gun and examined it, running sure fingers across the cold metal.

"Why salt? I would have thought hot sauce would be a more irritating condiment." He shot her a half smile and Vicki felt the aggression he'd arrived with dissipate. If _she'd _been attacked by some supernatural ice cube and the person who saved her disappeared without so much as a "Jeez, you sure get some bad hail up here!", she'd be pissed too. But hell, she was just happy they weren't trying to have her committed, jurisdictionary boundaries or no.

"Salt bullets work on an ice demon like hollow points on humans. Salt goes in, melts the ice it hits on the way and once it's embedded, causes major internal water haemorrhage. A day of rest and recuperation in its chosen den will pretty much fix an ice demon up but a couple of good shots can cut its night short, enough to save a few people anyway." Vicki rubbed her eyes tiredly.

"That would explain the trails of water droplets across the pavement after it flew off. Scully said the water was slightly saline." Mulder turned to his partner who looked up from the pages she was studying to Vicki.

"If this is true, wouldn't destroying the crystal ball kill the creature? In theory, this thing is elemental and derives its energy from the ball. Wouldn't shattering it cease animation?" Vicki admired the intelligence of the female agent and smiled at the glasses she put on to read the photocopies and printouts. Differently shaped to her own, they were a little owlish but managed to complement the redhead's large eyes perfectly.

"It should do, yeah. But there's still the small problem of not being able to find the genius who summoned the demon in the first place." Scully shot a look at Mulder and Vicki frowned. "What?"

"We found your guy." Scully removed her glasses and tucked a loose strand of hair behind her left ear. "Remember the X-File on that Baltimore man, Leo Hodges, found in his apartment covered in frost? You filed it a week before the first death, Mulder." As her partner nodded in recognition, Scully turned to Vicki.

"We're here following a series of deaths in Maryland, Pennsylvania, Ohio and now two in Toronto that were red flagged as similar to the ones in the US. All of the deceased were discovered with no obvious cause of death but with a significantly lowered body temperature hours, sometimes minutes, after death. This is expected, of course, but not to the degree reported. There was cell crystallisation, something that usually only occurs in people who've died of hypothermia, present in all the bodies, with average temperatures reported for each time of death in every location." She crossed her legs and thought for a moment.

"If I remember correctly, Hodges was a collector of antiquities and unusual artifacts. He was found face down on the floor of his penthouse apartment with every surface, especially around his body, covered with frost and ice. The only other thing out of place was a small radius of shattered glass near his left hip. It was assumed it was the crushed bowl of a champagne flute but what if it was this crystal ball you mention? It would certainly explain the frost. Some sort of endothermic reaction, like ethanoic acid with sodium carbonate, but much more powerful." Scully looked very far away for a moment and Vicki glanced at Mulder with a questioning look. He gave a slight shrug.

"She's not a big fan of the paranormal. I think a chemical reaction is more comforting than a sorceror's christmas decoration complete with magic snow and ice." Scully eyed him with vague hostility and amusement. Vicki coughed to hide her smile. Then she considered what she'd heard.

"But if that's right, the demon should be toast. It should have melted as soon as the crystal smashed. Unless..." She held her hand out for the file, which the other woman handed her. She flipped through until she found a page with a large asterisk in red pen next to an ending paragraph.

"Here... In some versions of the myth, the sorcerer's plan came undone because he was forced to destroy each ice demon several days after creation, to stop them becoming too powerful. Like the golems in Jewish folklore, the ice demons became more difficult to control as time passed. The sorceror was eventually killed by one demon he failed to 'deactivate' before it overpowered him."  
Vicki looked up. "That's not good."

"So Hodges was killed by the demon or crystal ball's energy when it broke... either way, the demon is still alive and neither the destruction of the crystal nor the death of its summoner has had any effect on it. And you have no idea how to kill it yourself." Scully summarised grimly. Mulder shifted in his chair, looking impatient with his partner's line of thought.

"Do we even want to kill it? We should study it, Scully. If there's even the slightest chance we can capture it, we've got to. What if this crystal ball was a piece of alien technology that controlled the movement and direction of wormholes - that creature could be an alien, come through from another galaxy or even another point in human history." He shot her a let's-be-reasonable look, hands spread.  
"Come on, isn't that more likely than magic and ice demons? More scientifically sound?" He paused, turning to Vicki. "No offence, Ms Nelson." She shrugged, standing up to lean against the back wall with her arms crossed.

"Doesn't bother me, I'm already betrothed to the Bruce Willis of the underworld. But seriously, what kind of cases are the FBI picking up these days?" Mulder smirked at Vicki. Scully shook her head vehemently, ignoring their little exchange.

"It doesn't matter what this thing is, alien or demon or genetic anomaly, it has killed eight people so far and we are not Animal Control. Our priority should be finding a way to destroy it and that's going to be hard enough. It's been alive for at least 3 weeks by our investigation, it's got to be a lot stronger than it was when Hodges died. Do we know how it feeds? Does it... feed?" She looked to Vicki who took a deep breath in and scuffed her shoe against the offices old wooden floor.

"I don't know. If it's responsible for your deaths then I guess it's taken something from the victims. The cyclist and the business exec they found here had nothing wrong with them, apart from being very cold and very dead. It's not eating any part of the victims and no one has seen it kill. I've seen a few attempted attacks but I managed to pop it each time before it chowed down. It freezes them... maybe it takes their heat?" Vicki was guessing, trying to find them an in. Mulder looked pensive but Scully began to nod slowly.

"An energy exchange. It's possible..." Mulder stood and walked to the window, hands in pockets. He turned to Vicki, his face open and inviting ideas.

"So, how're we going to stop this thing killing people?" Vicki looked from one agent to another and then to her coffee, gone disgustingly cold. And here she was hoping for an afternoon nap.

"Well, our best bet is to find where it sleeps. Attacking it during the day when its more vulnerable can only help. The problem is that it changes location every few days. This thing does not like to get comfortable. I found the basement of a condemned building that looked like the inside of a freezer a few days ago - that was its last hang out. Now, I have no idea. I know it's somewhere to the north-east. But with my assistant running herself into the ground, the other cases I have and the police being..." Vicki paused, searching for the right words, "...less than helpful, all I've been able to do is tail it until it gives up for the night."

She watched as Mulder and Scully shared a look and an understanding passed between them. It reminded Vicki of her and Mike when she was still on Homicide. The little redhead stood and her partner joined her by Vicki's desk.

"That's where we come in." Mulder started. "We'll help you track down this thing tonight and stay on it until it flies away home. A few extra bodies and a car couldn't hurt, if you don't mind us tagging along. Once we've figured out where it's hiding during the day, we're one step closer to getting rid of it altogether. If that's what we have to do..." He looked to Scully and she avoided his eyes. Vicki got the idea that it sucked being on the wrong end of that doleful look.

"For now, we've got files to relieve the local detectives of. Maybe we can get some help from them on possible locations for a demon to get some shut-eye. We might track down its nest before tonight." Vicki smiled half-heartedly, doubting their luck would hold out. As the FBI agents turned to leave, she remembered something.

"Ask for Mike Celluci, he'll help you out. Tell him I sent you, only leave out the part about the ice demon. It'll be easier, trust me." Scully nodded to her and Vicki tried to ignore the prickle at the back of her neck those eyes seemed to cause.

"Where shall we meet you?" Vicki pulled out a map from her top drawer, unfolded half of it and circled a patch of green a block north of the university.

"Ramsden Park. I've been starting out there for the past few nights. The demon tends to fly over around 10 o'clock. I'll be by the fountain from about 9."

She handed the map over to Agent Mulder, who tucked it into a coat pocket. As they both left in a swirl of tan and grey, Vicki flopped back into her chair. She stayed still for a moment, wondering how she ended up working one of her GhostBusters cases with a couple of FBI agents - who seemed to believe her. She shook it off and reached for her cheating husband's phone records. Plenty of time to think about her new allies after she'd earned her paycheck.


	3. Prelude to a Chase

Vicki sat with her feet up on the edge of the fountain, watching the stars and blinking away her tiredness. After tracking down her client's unfaithful husband at a hotel in Vancouver (convention in Minneapolis, my ass) and billing her for 6 gruelling days work, she'd managed to doze off for about 40 minutes before Mike called to confirm the suits flashing their IDs at him did, in fact, know her and weren't a couple of Coreen's friends trying to pull a fast one. Knowing the type of people her assistant hung out with and not forgetting that incident with the stolen FBI facial recognition software, Vicki couldn't really blame him for checking but she'd had roughly 8 hours sleep in the past three days and she was grumpy after being woken up.

After a rather heated exchange with Mike (which she apologised for after realising she'd called him an "ungrateful fanged bastard" which kind of indicated there was some misplaced anger there, sleep deprivation notwithstanding), she cleaned her rifle and hauled out the last few salt cartidges she had left from her bottom drawer. Putting her smallest flashlight in her jacket pocket and slinging her gun over one shoulder, she headed out for some Chinese before hailing a taxi to the park.

Vicki thought about the two FBI agents she was waiting for. It was an amazing stroke of luck, them showing up at her office. With Mike snowed under at work, Henry not speaking to her and Coreen working herself into an early grave, Vicki was just about to give up on solving this latest demon problem. Which would have royally sucked for its next victim. But Agents Mulder and Scully had stepped in with very little persuasion to her cause (and sanity), even filling in some of the blanks in her investigation. She wondered what kind of cases they were pulling for the Bureau, to be so accepting of her supernatural conclusions about their winged suspect. Something about X-Files? She shifted against the cold stone of the silent fountain._ If they're into weird and freaky, they can take some of my caseload_, Vicki thought, rubbing absent mindedly at her demon brands.

They were an interesting pair. That Agent Mulder was pretty unique, talking about aliens and the conservation of murderous ice demons. As far as Vicki was concerned, they could all go straight to hell, where they belonged. But she liked the smile that tugged at his lips when he made an unexpected joke and although she'd usually cut down any man who stood in her office, telling her what they were going to do about one of her cases, she was grateful for his unthinking support. They could have just demanded information from her and left. They probably would have been turned into US federal popsicles but they could have done it.

Agent Scully was something of an enigma. Vicki remembered the way those blue eyes watched her, considered her, gathered information to catalogue for later use. They were very intelligent, those eyes. And unsettling. Very unsettling. She was a walking contradiction, that woman. Absolutely tiny, even by Vicki's standards (she herself only came up to Mike's chin, something he would hold over her, very literally, whenever they got into an argument about who could take who in a fight), and pale as cream but with those piercing blue eyes and that flaming red hair. She seemed almost quiet, reserved, compared to her partner's innate energy. But when she looked up from Coreen's research right into Vicki's eyes, she knew Agent Scully was not all she seemed. Call it a cop's gut instinct.

Just as Vicki was about to check her watch, a car pulled up thirty yards away. The FBI agents exited the dark sedan and Mulder retrieved something from the back seat before they approached Vicki. She swung her legs over the concrete ledge and stood, brushing her jeans off. She glanced at her watch - 9:30.

"Ready for some demon hunting?" she threw across the grass. Scully gave her an almost smile and Mulder chambered a round in the pump action shotgun he'd retrieved from the back seat. Vicki looked at him sceptically. "Unless that's a cleverly disguised flamethrower, I have absolutely no idea what you're doing with that." Mulder grinned.

"Secret weapon. First, we did some scouting around today. Your friend Celluci was very helpful, once he was convinced we weren't impersonating US federal agents. He managed to get us these before his boss dragged him back into interview. Nice lady."

Mulder held up a couple of printed pages showing topographical maps of the area they were in. He shone a flashlight on the paper and Vicki noticed a few red dots were scattered over both pages.

"The dots are especially low points in the geography and a couple of abandoned warehouses Celluci pointed out to us. We checked half of them out before getting to Moore Park Ravine." He his teeth flashed white in the torchlight. "We found its hideout." Vicki stared in surprise.

"Nice work."

Of course, she couldn't have found its newest nest herself, she was exhausted and had no time. But it was still a little annoying that a couple of Americans could come in and make a huge jump in her case in just a few hours. Hmm.

"It's using a cave at the bottom of the ravine for its current habitation. But we have no way of knowing if it will return there or to a new location, correct?" Scully looked to Vicki, who nodded. "That's where Mulder's secret weapon comes in." She smiled a little indulgently at her partner, who waggled his eyebrows.

"We obtained a couple of tracking devices that can be fired from this shotgun. They're located inside specially designed ammunition that shouldn't break down impacting anything under the integrity of a steel door. Let's hope this creature is just animated frozen water." It was obvious Scully had her doubts.

"How do we do this?" Mulder asked, folding the maps up and sliding them into a coat pocket. Vicki glanced up at the sky.

"Well, I've been tracking it on foot. That's the most effective way, so long as you can keep up. It stops, sometimes, but you have to run. I'd say one of you in the car, one with me. We should keep in contact..."

Mulder pulled out a walkie from one pocket and Scully pushed back her coat to show another at her waist.

"Good thinking. So..." she looked from one to the other, "Who's the lucky one?"

"And that's my cue to call driver." Mulder jingled the keys above his head and turned to walk back to the car. Vicki rolled her eyes.

"Real nice, G-man." she called after him. Scully gave a fully fledged smile at that and Vicki paused, returning it with one of her own. Wow. That was unexpected. And bright. And... nice. The two women moved back to the fountain's edge, craning their necks to look up at the blanket of stars above them. A good night for demon hunting, clear and light.

"So, Ms Nelson, I understand you were a police officer before you became a private investigator." Scully left her gaze drift from the stars down to Vicki's face, head tilting slightly, auburn hair sifting forward. Vicki readjusted the strap of her gun slung diagonally across her shoulders.

"Call me Vicki. Yeah, I was a cop. I had to leave the force, it wasn't working for me." Avoiding Scully's eyes. A lot. She heard her shift on the gravel that surrounded the fountain.

"Medical reasons, wasn't it?" Vicki's head jerked to the side. She took in Scully's calm, ever so slightly concerned expression and snorted.

"Mike shooting his mouth off again? That patronising, egotistical..." Scully interrupted her rant before it could really get started.

"Retinitis pigmentosa. I asked because we'd already checked out your service record before we spoke to Detective Celluci and it didn't mention the nature of your problem. I'm a doctor and an FBI agent - I guess I'm just naturally nosey." Blue eyes bore into Vicki's green ones and the blonde felt something pull in her chest.

"I'm sorry, Vicki."

There was a long pause where Vicki just couldn't think what to say. A unique event.

"Uh..." Vicki suddenly realised how paranoid she was being (and cynical and snappy and insulting but chalk one up to Mike, definitely paranoid) and laughed. "No, I'm sorry. I'm just a little touchy about the whole blindness thing. It's frustrating..." She smiled. "...and frightening and depressing." Scully smiled with her, pink lips twitching gently. "And I'm not usually one to talk about myself but listen to this, I just keep going." She glanced at the redhead, trying for a reassuring look.

"If you don't mind me asking, do you usually spend this much time out in the dark? Given the night blindess?" Scully asked casually, scanning the sky again. Vicki pulled her leather jacket closer around herself.

"Yeah, actually. I usually have someone with me. Well, he's usually the reason I'm out at night anyway." An unreadable look passed across the FBI agent's face. Another unreadable look, she was good at those.

"Lovers quarrel?" Vicki smirked, worrying the seam of her jacket with a thumbnail. Henry would get a kick out of that. If he ever spoke to her again.

"No. Definitely not. I kind of... stabbed him." Scully looked at her with an eyebrow raised, inviting an explanation. "Well, long story short - he's a vampire, so he's okay. I just, kind of, stabbed him. With his own sword." She figured she could leave the dark magic and blood drinking out for now.

"A vampire?" Scully stared at Vicki, like she was waiting for the punch line. Vicki shrugged a little and nodded. Scully looked like she was about to ask another question (or twenty) but she crossed her arms instead, clearing her throat. "You seem to live a very complex life."

"You have no idea, Agent Scully." Vicki sighed, scanning the horizon. The redhead regarded her with a look of incredulity and empathy, the ratio of which remained unclear.

"Please call me Dana, Vicki." The smaller woman looked heavenward, searching for a shadow blocking the starlight, listening for a screech. She pondered the silence that slid between them, before pushing it aside.

"I _was_ one hell of a shot. Now I'm a lucky shot. Eventually, I'll just miss. I usually use my night stick but asking a demon to fly a little closer so you can hit it probably wouldn't yield as successful results as our special ammunition." Scully tilted her head in acknowledgement. Vicki's eyes were drawn by the movement. The quarter moon didn't give them a great amount of light to see by but enough that the pale woman's skin seemed to glow against the shadows of the park. Vicki had always been glad of her bronzed colour, less worry in protecting it from the sun, but there was something about warm ivory that reflected the moon. Scully caught her staring and the corner of her mouth twitched, the hint of a smile.

"So... federal agent, huh? How's that working out for you?" Vicki made a show of turning and sitting at the fountain's edge, appearing extremely serious and interested. Scully rubbed the back of her neck, thinking.

"It's very stimulating. The cases we take aren't exactly... what I envisioned myself being involved with at the FBI. But I do enjoy my job." Vicki leant her elbows on her knees and clasped her hands together.

"Helps having a good partner." Scully nodded, with some hesitation. Vicki didn't miss it and the investigator in her filed it away for later.

"Mulder is a very singular agent. I've seen a lot because of him and I've learned a lot from him, too. I'm lucky in many ways. He's a great partner." Vicki looked about to say something when she cocked her head and listened. She stood and looked straight up into the sky.

"Did you hear that?"


End file.
